Jasper County Democrat, Volume 23, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 July 1920 — SENATOR HARDING’S PROGRAM [ARTICLE]

SENATOR HARDING’S PROGRAM

But the crucial utterance (in Senator Harding’s acceptance speech) is that upon the Issue which is to stand in the very front of the cam | paign—the Versailles treaty and the league of nations. In his cautious way, meandering through a thousand words or more, Senator Harding manages to say two things upon this cardinal issue with fair clearness. These are: (1) “I promise you formal and effective peace so quickly as a Republican congress can pass

flclal Republican/ interpretation of the Chicago platform. It is an impossible program. A separate peace with Germany must either be with conditions or be without conditions. A peace without conditions is unthinkable. But to obtain a peace with conditions means a series of conferences in which the long list of questions thrashed out by the allies during those busy months at Versailles must be thrashed out all over again. And where would the process leave us? Would there be any advantage in arriving at a different set of conclusions from those embodied in the Versailles document? Would a different set pf conclusions be enforceable? Could we possibly wish to join with Germany in attempting to enforce them against England, France, Belgium and Italy, our late associates in arms ? But if a different set of conclusions is impracticable, why continue the anomalous position which we have been occupyign for a year? As for another league, the malcontents’ at 1787 might as well have begun an agitation for another constitution. Senator Harding’s program is nothing less than a repudiation of our professed ideals of international cooperation, for it repudiates the only method of giving them early and effective application. His' treatment of the outstanding issues of the campaign is futile. He is not faithful even to that “dominant group of the senate” of which he was a part and which he proudly asserts he understands. He has not & word for the Lodge reservations which were fought over so bitterly and which were to bring peace with honor and safety. The treaty which President Wilson was to blame for not permitting to be ratified with the reserits declaration for a Republican ex-

ecutive to sign.” (2) “With a senate advising as the constitution contemplates, I would hopefully approach the nations of Europe and of the earth, proposing that understanding which makes us a willing participant in the consecration of nations to a new relationship." It is plain from these words that Senator Harding is for a separate peace and a new league. He would make peace after the Knox fashion, by resolution, and then he would see what could be done to institute a league or association or fortuitous con. course of nations to take the place of the league, which is a going concern, now at work executing the treaty of Versailles. This is Senator Harding’s, and therefore the ofvations adopted with the consent of the dominant group of the senate has become a treaty which the Republicans will not permit to be ratified under any circumstances. Senator Harding’s declaration will set people to asking whether the dominant group of the senate intended all along to kill the treaty. If they did, it would have been more honest to say so time. Senator Harding’s statement upon the central issue of the campaign ought to dispel Senator Johnson’s last lingering doubt and give Senator Borah a fresh infusion of Republican loyalty. What in his heaxt ex-President Taft must think of it, it would be unkind to inquire. By it the senator will chill the spirit of the great body of independent voters who were awaiting his pronouncement and cause them to look to the acceptance speech of Governor Cox, to whom Mr. Harding has opened a great opportunity.—New York Evening Post.